Most of the anticancer drugs currently in clinical use for chemotherapy are monomeric compounds with a low molecular weight less than 1000 Da. Such monomeric low molecular weight anticancer drugs are well known to cause severe toxicities and side effects due to their non-selectivity to tumor cells and tissue when injected intravenously, and furthermore, their short half-life less than a few hours during blood circulation limits their sustainable efficacy. Therefore, the most critical key technologies to overcome in the new anticancer drug development is the tumor targeting technology for selective delivery of anticancer drugs to the tumor site and timely releasing technology of the active component of anticancer drugs in the tumor site. A great deal of efforts to overcome such limits have been made in the world for last decades, and as a result, it has been discovered that polymeric drug delivery systems are one of the most efficient and practical ways to bring a breakthrough, from which a new field called “polymer therapy” emerged (R. Haag, F. Kratz, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45 (2006) 1198-1215).
Most of the polymers employed as drug delivery systems are organic polymers synthetic or natural. Numerous natural and synthetic polymers were attempted as drug delivery systems for polymer therapy, but only a limited number of drug delivery systems were found to be useful, since in addition to afore-mentioned tumor targeting properties and releasing kinetics many requirements such as water solubility, biodegradability, self-toxicity, compatibility with the loaded drug should be satisfied for polymer therapy of cancer.
The present inventors discovered decades ago that in contrast to the organic polymers above-mentioned a new class of organic/inorganic hybrid polymers were designed by grafting various organic groups to the inorganic polymer backbone consisting of alternating nitrogen and phosphorus atoms called phosphazene (Y. S. Sohn, et al. Macromolecules, 1995, 28, 7566), which have been intensively developed as drug delivery systems for cancer therapy. In the early stage, various hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and hydrophobic oligopeptides were introduced into the phosphazene backbone to obtain amphiphilic polyphosphazenes affording thermosensitive drug delivery systems. It was also found that such amphiphilic polyphosphazenes are self-assembled into various nanostructures such as thermosensitive micelles and hydrogels useful for drug delivery in aqueous solution, but also were observed decreased water solubility and some toxicity due to some hydrophobic oligopeptide grafted to polyphosphazene backbone. It is generally known that such amphiphilic polymers exhibit a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) at which the polymer start to precipitate from its aqueous solution when slowly heated. Therefore, amphiphilic polymer drug delivery system should exhibit higher LCST than body temperature for intravenous injection to avoid its precipitation during blood circulation.
Concerning the hydrophobic anticancer drugs, the taxane family including paclitaxel and docetaxel is one of the most widely used for efficient chemotherapy of a wide spectrum of cancers including breast, ovarian and non-small cell lung cancers. Since these taxane anticancer agents are only slightly soluble in water (<1 μg/ml), they cannot be directly injected but should be formulated using surfactants such as Polysorbate 80 or Cremophore EL and ethanol for IV injection. However, such formulated taxane anticancer agents exhibit several adverse effects including neurotoxicity and neutropenia due to the agent itself and hypersensitivity due to the solvent system, which limit their wider clinical use.
Therefore, a great deal of researches have been made in various fields during the last decade to overcome such adverse effects, and among them, nanotechnology using various structural morphology is most actively progressing. In particular, the polymeric micelles composed of the hydrophilic outer shell and hydrophobic core can afford to solubilize the hydrophobic anticancer drugs such as taxane by encapsulation of the hydrophobic drug molecules in the hydrophobic micelle core. Also, the taxane drug molecules may be conjugated by chemical bonding to the hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) to solubilize, which are now in clinical trials.
Such polymeric prodrugs composed of small molecular anticancer drugs conjugated to the polymeric drug delivery systems are expected to extend their blood circulation time and afford tumor targeting properties by enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect (H. Maeda et al. J. Control. Release 65(2000) 271-284) along with controlled drug release, resulting in maximum drug efficacy and minimum toxicity. According to the recent reports, the polymer particle size should be in the range of 50-200 nm in order to exhibit tumor targeting properties by EPR effect (V. P. Torchilin, J. Control. Release 73 (2001) 137-172).
Also, it was reported from the study of gene delivery that cationic polymers can easily permeate anionic tumor cells (N. P. Gabrielson, D. W. Park, J. Control. Release 136 (2009) 54-61). However, Poliglumex composed of paclitaxel conjugated to poly(glutamic acid) currently in clinical phase III is strongly cationic but it was known to be more accumulated in other organs than in tumor tissue, which delays its commercialization (S. Wallace; C. Li, Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev. 60 (2008) 886-898).